359. The Secret Garden; movie review

 

 

THE SECRET GARDEN

Cert PG

100 mins

BBFC advice: Contains mild scary scenes, threat

"That was nowhere near as good as the other Secret Gardens".

That was the damning verdict of Mrs W on Marc Munden's adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic novel.

Either I haven't seen any of the films which have been made since the 1940s or I must have found them as unmemorable as this.

I presumed that Munden was intending to convey drama and even a splash of eeriness but his movie had neither.

And that was surprising considering that Julie Walters and Colin Firth were among its headline cast.

The Secret Garden stars Dixie Egerickx as Mary, a young girl who is orphaned when he parents die during Partition in India.

She is sent back to England where she is to live with her widower uncle (Firth) in his mansion on the Yorkshire moors.

From the outset, it is made clear by the housekeeper (Walters) that her welcome will be cold, she will have to make her own entertainment and several rooms of the mansion are out of bounds.

However, Mary doesn't take instruction easily and wants to explore.

When she does, she discovers a dog she calls Jemima, the brother (Amir Wilson) of the mansion's maid (Isis Davis) and a beautiful secret garden behind a wall in the estate's grounds.

She also finds, locked up in one of the forbidden rooms, her cousin (Eden Hayhurst) who is confined to bed because of a condition which means he cannot walk.

Mary prods him into becoming her friend and tempts him into seeing life outside.

Meanwhile, her uncle is possessed with grief over the loss of his wife, the twin sister of Mary's mother.

And that's it - apart from a bit of harrumphing by Walters and Firth and defiance by Egerickx's Mary, there isn't a lot more to The Secret Garden until five minutes before its end.

But even when the film reaches its supposed crescendo, its outcome is tepid.

I believe Mrs W on her assertion that this was an unnecessary addition to the previous adaptations of the Secret Garden.

It was easy to see why it wasn't held back for the cinema reopenings.

Reasons to watch: Adaptation of a classic

Reasons to avoid: Not as good as its predecessors

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 4/10

Did you know? In 1898, Frances Hodgson Burnett rented Great Maytham Hall in Kent, a Downton Abbey-style manor with a walled kitchen garden. When Burnett moved in, the ivy on the walls was so overgrown that she couldn’t find the door to the garden. Finally, like Mary in The Secret Garden, a robin sitting on a nearby branch showed her where it was. 

The final word. Dixie Egerickx: "I feel like the film focuses a lot more on the mental health of the characters. It goes deeper into why Mary has had such a bad relationship with her mother which other adaptations don't really go into. Even the novel doesn't go in as in-depth. I feel like, especially with the pandemic a lot of people's mental health has suffered so that's why it might be even more relevant now." Glamour

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